Warming Threatens Safari Game

Those magnificent big game animals that hung out with Tarzan, frolicked in the Jungle Book and grazed majestically in Disney’s The Lion King are coming to a museum of extinct species near you!

Recent
studies by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF) and various universities from around the world, show disturbing
trends on the African plains that will mean the weakening, numerical
decline and ultimate endangerment of much of its wildlife. As
well, this parallels similar challenges that climate change is posing
to the survival of our own legendary big game, such as polar bears in
the Arctic.

The KWS’ Biodiversity Research Unit has issued a
report saying that new weather and migration patterns – extremes in
rainfall leading to short-term drought followed by downpours and
flooding – are forcing wildlife into more developed areas.

This
vagabond wildlife, under its own ecological pressures, is killing
domesticated animals such as sheep and goats, in the case of big cats,
or destroying food crops, in the case of elephants, rhino and
buffalo.

Not only does this mean that more “rogue”
wildlife are being killed by farmers, but also that these animals are
being victimized by diseases that they would not normally
encounter. Again, this is also happening with migration of bears,
big cats and moose out of our Canadian national and provincial parks
into farm, tourism and even suburban areas.

A decade ago, 1.5
million wildebeest lived and moved about the 10,000 square mile expanse
of East Africa’s main game parks – the Serengeti and the Masai Mara –
migrating with the predictable rain clouds.

Wildebeest
play an important role in the African ecosystem, eating down the grass
and fertilizing the soil while providing food for big cats, hyenas and
so forth – and even crocodiles when the wildebeest ford streams and
rivers – that depend on them for protein.

Today,
wildebeest numbers are down to 1.2 million, a 20% drop, due to
population growth in East Africa, increased deforestation, poaching,
and the unpredictability of rain, causing famine not only for the
wildebeest but for their predators and for the human population.

Along
with climate change, another factor in this process of weakening the
sustainability of African wildlife is the use of chemicals in
agriculture. Studies have shown that the genetic traits that make
up the most aggressive and dominant features of lions are
dwindling. The lions with dark manes are known to be the alpha
males, as this is indicative of high testosterone levels.
Dark-maned lions eat more of the pride’s kill, have a longer
reproductive life-span and a higher level of offspring
survival.

At the same time, report KWS
scientists, as mean temperatures have risen almost a degree Celsius in
their environments, the dark-maned lion has proven to be more prone to
the ill effects of these rising heat levels, leading to less food
intake and lower sperm count in hot months. Chemical pollutants
in Africa and around the world have led to a so-called “feminization”
in some species, particularly documented in fish.

Males
are more profoundly affected by these pollutants and the extrapolated
future of many species reads like something out of science
fiction.

Of course, ordinary people are also the victims
of the current changes in climate. Tourism operators and
employees face dislocation with the changes in migration patterns and
the decrease in animal numbers.

Seventy percent of the
population in East Africa lives by farming, so changes in rainfall,
production numbers, exports and income effect the most vulnerable, the
poor rural workers. The loss of the icecap on Mount Kilimanjaro –
82% of the glacier first surveyed in 1912 in now gone – which feeds
many rivers in the area, aiding agriculture and human habitation, is
reason for great concern. Humans, like wildlife, are impacted by
the rains and waterways available.

Climate change could create troublesome patterns of human migration, along with the animal variety.

Africa
occupies twenty percent of the earth’s land surface and contains 20% of
all known species of plants, mammals and birds, and one-sixth of all
amphibians and reptiles.

As an example, 90% of the
antelope species on earth are concentrated in Africa and the predicted
change in weather will profoundly affect them.

Earlier
this year, the KWS moved to avert a disaster by relocating herbivores
into select national parks in order to feed lions that would otherwise
come into conflict with human domestic populations. They are also
banning human population which had been moving into sensitive habitat
in wildlife parks, to avoid increased deforestation and polluting of
water sources, and are undertaking a major tree replenishment
initiative.

Human activity has profoundly affected our
planet. With a population of over six billion and counting,
with the pollutants that we’ve mixed with the air, water and land, and
with our not wanting to make profound changes in how we treat the
Earth, signs are now becoming apparent of the damage caused.

If
we read those signs properly and take swift action, we may avert the
worst of what is on the horizon. There is no more beautiful
horizon than that above the African savannah, in the Serengeti and
Masai Mara. Profoundly, it is the area from which humans first
emerged.